Letter of the month, by Dennis Rhodes in the Banner: “When those kids get tired of occupying Wall Street they ought to come to Provincetown. After being exposed to our real estate prices, property taxes and the price of a meal in some of our finer restaurants, they’ll know what greed and avarice really is.”

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From film critic to the school beat. That’s the newspaper arc that Michael Rausch has followed. The former movie reviewer for The Barnstable Patriot, who wrote for Boston’s WHDH Channel 7 news for 13 years, is covering the Bourne and Sandwich schools for the Enterprise papers as well as the Bourne police and fire beats.

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An alternate member of a town’s harbor committee doesn’t often merit 19 paragraphs on Page 3 of his hometown newspaper, but Chris Brooke is an exception. The Banner says the 19-year-old Provincetown High grad may be the youngest board member in town history. “When I told some people I wanted to get on a board they told me I wasn’t ready, but I zone them out,” Brooke told the paper. “I’m going to do what I feel is right.”

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Chatham residents have reason to thank their reference librarian, Amy Andreasson, who collected descriptions of sites in town that have connections to the period covered by Nate Philbrick’s Mayflower, this year’s “One Book, One Town” selection. Her report guides readers to intriguing locations such as a Native American sharpening stone at Goose Pond.

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A good lead is a story’s bright, smiling face. It promises readers that their time won’t be wasted, because the writer took the time to greet them with something special. An old master at this is The Cape Codder’sRich Eldred, who returned to form in what might have seemed a dull “process” story. Just nine days after the Brewster selectmen opposed unanimously Chris Powicki’s idea of creating an elected “energy advocate,” the town’s finance committee voted to support the notion by 8-0. Here’s how Eldred began the tale: “Perhaps his salesmanship improved, or Mercury was in retrograde, or the financial tea leaves floated differently to the bottom of the cup.”

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True Blue: Sandwich High School is sticking with the Blue Knight as its mascot, despite a swirling rumor that the Canalside town’s players were going to be renamed the Breakers. The Enterprise interviewed Falmouth’s Lee Adams, who came up with the name as a high schooler in Sandwich back in 1959. “A knight defends and attacks,” he said. “It is both aggressive and passive, and there is integrity and honor associated with a knight.” Of a rumored new name, Adams snarled, “The Blue Bombers sounds a little like a roller derby team.”

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Cranberries get most of the press, but it’s Eastham turnips that win the hearts of devoted Cape Codders. Thanks to The Cape Codder for news of the annual Turnip Festival Nov. 19 at 1 p.m. at Nauset Regional High School in Eastham. Details are at www.easthamlibrary.org.

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We applaud the local papers that find room to print selections from their towns’ high school newspapers. The Falmouth Enterprise publishes stories from FHS’s The Intelligencer, including a recent piece about parking fees for students at the school. “Really, Mr. Driscoll, $80? Come on…” is how Jesse Delmonico starts the student paper’s story, citing a common refrain heard by the principal. The co-editor-in-chief knows how to end a story, too: “As for Mr. Driscoll, he noted that he drove himself to school in a 1952 Chevy when he attended Cardinal Spellman High School, but did not pay to park at the private school.”

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You’ve probably seen roadside flower stands on the Cape that offer arrangements on the honor system. Leave it to a Provincetown artist to find a way to adapt the idea to sell her works. The Banner reports that Alyssa Schmidt’s art stand offers her small works for $60; she’s sold almost 30 paintings since May and has been shorted just once.

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There’s a long history of competition between the Cape’s daily paper and the Enterprise. Tales are told of how the former Standard-Times made a big push decades ago to smother Falmouth with coverage, to little avail. More recently, the Mashpee Enterprise ran a photo of Occupy Cape Cod protesters demonstrating outside the daily’s Hyannis office to “demand that the paper cover their movement.” That local movement’s influence was overstated, however, in the caption that said the group held a vigil to honor a man injured “at an Occupy Cape Cod protest in Oakland, California…”

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The kind of stocks that Chatham cares about are found in safe deposit boxes, not in front of the town offices. Last month, summer resident Don Edge withdrew his proposal to set up a Colonial stock and pillory downtown as part of Chatham’s tricentennial celebration after hearing some loud voices of opposition. A bit grumpily, Edge told The Cape Cod Chronicle, “The same people who were objecting to it on the Chatham 300th Committee would have been bringing their children and grandchildren down there for a photo op.”

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The assignment seems simple: pull a string that eventually leads to a dice roll. But there are many steps in between for the engineering class at Falmouth’s Lawrence School, especially when teacher Robert Porto has introduced them to the genius of Rube Goldberg. The Enterprise reported that the students are learning to emulate the late artist, who drew intricate cartoons showing multiple steps to completing a simple task. You can see this process carried to the extreme in a YouTube video at http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=RouXygRcRC4.

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The Cape Cod Chronicleredesigned its front page after warning its readers that change was on the way. The new look, based on the paper’s website, will “also create the opportunity for an ad at the bottom of the page; we’re among the last newspapers to adopt this feature, made necessary by economic realities.”

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Barnstable Town Council had a lively discussion last month about memorial benches and whether policies should be in place when families want to donate seats in memory of late loved ones. Falmouth has been wrestling with the matter, too, as the Enterprise reported. Ironically, a granite bench planned for the library lawn on Main Street in Falmouth was intended to honor a man who spent more than three decades caring for the town’s monuments. The bench would have been opposite the County Fare Restaurant, where John P. Sylvia Jr. enjoyed his breakfast. Library trustees have banned benches and monuments on the lawn, however.

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It’s where the talkies were introduced to Chatham, where Ray Charles graced the stage, and where bandages and birthday cards have been sold more recently. The 1916 Chatham Theater is back in the news, perhaps just in time for the town’s tricentennial celebration in 2012. The Cape Cod Chronicle reported that a local group is raising funds to buy the building, used for the last couple of decades as a CVS pharmacy, and restore it to show movies. With the recent sale of the Regal Cinema building in East Harwich to the Cape Cod Lighthouse Charter School, the Chatham venue would be the only movie house between Dennis and Wellfleet.